Practical Guide to Cloud Computing

The "Practical Guide to Cloud Computing" whitepaper was written by the CSCC to help enterprise IT and business decision makers adopt cloud computing to solve business challenges. This webcast will help cloud customers evaluate the market from the point of view of their organization’s needs. You will learn how to select the right cloud architecture and implementation approach through the use of in-house staff, cloud vendor(s) or both.

The Cloud Standards Customer Council has published a new whitepaper, Best Practices for Developing and Growing a Cloud-Enabled Workforce.

In this webinar, the authors will introduce key concepts detailed in the paper and discuss the business context driving demand for new IT skill sets and a cloud-knowledgeable workforce. The discussion will focus on:

• business reasons for investing in cloud computing and related IT skill sets
• the new roles, responsibilities and requirements introduced by cloud computing
• strategies for developing staff and recognizing growth
• a review of cloud training and certification programs available today

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation builds sustainable ecosystems and fosters a community around a constellation of projects that orchestrate containers as part of a microservices architecture. CNCF serves as the vendor-neutral home for many of the fastest-growing projects on GitHub, including Kubernetes, Prometheus and Envoy, fostering collaboration between the industry’s top developers, end users, and vendors. In this webinar, Dan Kohn, CNCF Executive Director, will present:

• A brief overview of CNCF
• Evolving monolithic applications to microservices on Kubernetes
• Why Continuous Integration is the most important part of the cloud native architecture

Cloud Foundry from the Linux Foundation is a collection of complementary open source technologies focused on application developers and operators, as well as many projects to support and extend them.

In this webinar on April 24th, Chip Childers will provide an overview of Cloud Foundry technologies (Application Runtime, Container Runtime and BOSH) discussing use cases and core project updates. He will discuss the technical benefits of the platform, focus areas for 2018, and major highlights from the Cloud Foundry Summit, April 18-20 in Boston, MA.

As organizations consider migrating applications to the cloud, a business plan and detailed migration plan is critical to success. Version 2.0 covers the key considerations of cloud migration and takes into account the increasing diversity of approaches such as the use of containers, virtual machines and serverless functions, as well as the increasing use of hybrid cloud solutions. In addition, mitigating concerns related to security, privacy and data residency is a major focus of the update.

In this webinar, authors of the paper will discuss each of the six steps outlined in the migration roadmap:

With the rise of managed IT services and cloud computing, sensitive data is regularly moved across countries and jurisdictions, which can be in direct conflict with various international, national or local regulations dictating where certain types of data can be stored (e.g., the European Union’ General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR). Data residency is also a consideration of data owners responsible for protecting and securing data from unintended access.

The Object Management Group® (OMG®), a technology standards consortium, launched a working group in 2015 to address the challenges of data residency and define a standards roadmap to help stakeholders manage the location of their data and metadata.

Given the complexity of the issue, a stepwise improvement plan is necessary. This webinar will introduce a new Data Residency Maturity Model (DRMM) proposed in December 2017. Similar to the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) invented in 1990 at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), the DRMM contains five maturity levels aimed at helping an organization improve their practices and governance of data residency. The OMG seeks feedback on the DRMM and calls on all interested parties to contribute to this work.

Hyperledger is an umbrella open source project started in December 2015 by the Linux Foundation to support the collaborative development of blockchain-based distributed ledgers across industries. A blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked and secured using cryptography. Transactions between two parties are recorded efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.

In this webinar, Dan O’Prey and Tracy Kuhrt will present an update on the blockchain market, industry trends, and new Hyperledger projects. They will discuss the technical items delivered over the last 6 months and focus areas for Hyperledger in 2018.

Version 2.0 of Interoperability and Portability for Cloud Computing: A Guide is now available.

This paper from the Cloud Standards Customer Council provides a clear definition of interoperability and portability and how these concepts relate to different components in the architecture of cloud computing, each of which needs to be considered in its own right. Version 2.0 reflects the new ISO/IEC 19941 Cloud Computing Interoperability and Portability standard and its facet models of interoperability, data portability, and application portability.

In this webinar, authors of the paper will discuss how to select and provision cloud services indicating how interoperability and portability affect the cost, security and risk involved.

Version 3.0 of Security for Cloud Computing: Ten Steps to Ensure Success has just been released for publication. As organizations consider a move to cloud computing, it is important to weigh the potential security benefits and risks involved and set realistic expectations with cloud service providers. The aim of this guide to help enterprise information technology (IT) and business decision makers analyze the security implications of cloud computing on their business.

In this webinar, authors of the paper will discuss:
• Security, privacy and data residency challenges relevant to cloud computing
• Considerations that organizations should weigh when migrating data, applications, and infrastructure to a cloud computing environment
• Threats, technology risks, and safeguards for cloud computing environments
• A cloud security assessment to help customers assess the security capabilities of cloud service providers

The Practical Guide to Cloud Computing is the CSCC’s seminal deliverable outlining key definitions, characteristics, and benefits of cloud computing. The heart of the guide is a comprehensive 10-step “Roadmap for Cloud Computing” containing guidance and strategies for the successful migration and deployment of cloud computing applications.

In this webinar, the authors will review each of the 10 steps in the guide and highlight the technical changes made to this latest version including the emergence of hybrid cloud, containers, serverless computing and microservices architectures.

For cloud computing, interoperability and portability related challenges are likely to intensify and become more difficult to manage as systems grow more complex and interconnected, especially with the use of multiple cloud services as part of a system. In this webinar, the Cloud Standards Customer Council will receive an update on a new ISO Cloud Computing Interoperability and Portability specification - ISO/IEC 19941. This new ISO standard specifies cloud computing interoperability and portability types and the relationship and interactions between these two cross-cutting aspects of cloud computing. It also provides a model to enable a clear description of interoperability and portability when building and using systems based on cloud computing.

Attending this webinar is beneficial for all parties involved in cloud computing – cloud service customers, cloud service providers, and cloud service partners – to gain a common understanding of interoperability and portability for their specific needs.

Today, the majority of big data and analytics use cases are built on hybrid cloud infrastructure. A hybrid cloud is a combination of on-premises and local cloud resources integrated with one or more dedicated cloud(s) and one or more public cloud(s). Hybrid cloud computing has matured to support data security and privacy requirements as well as increased scalability and computational power needed for big data and analytics solutions.

This webinar summarizes what hybrid cloud is, explains why it is important in the context of big data and analytics, and discusses implementation considerations unique to hybrid cloud computing.

The CSCC has published version 2.0 of Cloud Customer Architecture for Big Data & Analytics – a reference architecture that describes elements and components needed to support big data and analytics solutions using cloud computing. Version 2.0 of the architecture includes support for new use cases and cognitive computing.

Big data analytics (BDA) and cloud computing are a top priority for CIOs. As cloud computing and big data technologies converge, they offer a cost-effective delivery model for cloud-based analytics. Many companies are experimenting with different cloud configurations to understand and refine requirements for their big data analytics solutions.

This webinar will cover:

• Business reasons to adopt cloud computing for big data and analytics capabilities
• Proven architecture patterns that have been deployed in successful enterprise BDA projects
• An architectural overview of a big data analytics solution in a cloud environment with a description of the capabilities offered by cloud providers

Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs) are integrated products that provide for the management of public, private and hybrid cloud environments. The rise of hybrid IT architectures increases the need for process harmonization and tools interoperability to address evolving requirements through the use of a CMP.

Blockchain technology has the potential to have a major impact on how institutions process transactions and conduct business. At its core, blockchain features an immutable distributed ledger and a decentralized network that is cryptographically secured. A blockchain is a historical record of all the transactions that have taken place in the network since the beginning of the blockchain and serves as a single source of truth for the network.

Attend this webinar to learn about the capabilities of a Blockchain cloud reference architecture including deployment considerations and specific application examples.

Cloud Foundry is an open source platform for deploying and managing cloud applications. Cloud Foundry CTO, Chip Childers, will provide an overview of the Cloud Foundry platform, its various use cases, and core project updates. Chip will discuss the technical benefits of the platform, highlight the technical direction of the project, explain focus areas for 2017, and provide highlights from the Cloud Foundry Summit, June 13-15 in Santa Clara, CA.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most exciting and dynamic areas of IT at the present time. IoT involves the linking of physical entities (“things”) with IT systems that derive information about or from those things which can be used to drive a wide variety of applications and services. IoT covers a very wide spectrum of applications, spanning enterprises, governments and consumers and represents the integration of systems from traditionally different communities: Information Technology and Operational Technology. As a result, it is important for IoT systems to have architectures, systems principles, and operations that can accommodate the interesting scale, safety, reliability, and privacy requirements. Attend this webinar to hear best practices for supporting the Internet of Things (IoT) using cloud computing.

Introduced in 2004, the Data Distribution Service has developed into a mature and proven connectivity standard within the IIoT. Today, DDS is at the heart of a large number of mission- and business-critical systems such as, Air Traffic Control and Management, Train Control Systems, Energy Production Systems, Medical Devices, Autonomous Vehicles, and Smart Cities. Considering the technological trends towards data-centricity and the rate of adoption, tomorrow, DDS will be at the heart of an incredible number of Industrial IoT (IIoT) systems.

To help you become an expert in DDS and expand your skills in the growing DDS market, Object Management Group is offering this DDS Technical Overview webinar series covering three key areas: (1) the essence of DDS and data-centric systems, (2) how to effectively exploit DDS Quality of Service to build applications that perform and scale, and (3) securing your distributed DDS system.

Part I of the OMG DDS Webinar Series will get you started with DDS. We will (1) cover in great details DDS’ key abstractions, (2) introduce the essence of DDS-based data-centric and modular architectures, and (3) clearly position DDS with respect to messaging technologies. After attending this webcast you will know the fundamentals required to start using DDS in your next project. Presented by Angelo Corsaro, Ph.D., CTO at ADLINK Technology and Co-Chair of the OMG's DDS Special Interest Group.

Part II: DDS QoS to Solve Real World Problems presented by Gerardo Pardo-Castellote, CTO of RTI and Co-Chair of OMG's DDS Special Interest Group is available here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/12231/252387

Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration, hosted by The Linux Foundation, including leaders in finance, banking, IoT, supply chain, manufacturing and technology.

In this webinar, Dan O'Prey, CMO at Digital Asset and Chair of the Hyperledger Marketing Committee, and IBM’s Chris Ferris, chair of the Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee, will provide an overview of the Hyperledger Project. They will discuss the basics of distributed ledger technologies, business use cases for blockchain, and how to get involved with Hyperledger projects.

As data is increasingly accessed and shared across geographic boundaries, a growing web of conflicting laws and regulations dictate where data can be transferred, stored, and shared, and how it is protected. The Object Management Group® (OMG®) and the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) recently completed a significant effort to analyze and document the challenges posed by data residency.
Data residency issues result from the storage and movement of data and metadata across geographies and jurisdictions. Attend this webinar to learn more about data residency:

•How it may impact users and providers of IT services (including but not limited to the cloud)
•The complex web of laws and regulations that govern this area
•The relevant aspects – and limitations -- of current standards and potential areas of improvement
•How to contribute to future work

The Cloud Standards Customer Council has published a reference architecture for securing workloads on cloud services. The aim of this new guide is to provide a practical reference to help IT architects and IT security professionals architect, install, and operate the information security components of solutions built using cloud services.

Building business solutions using cloud services requires a clear understanding of the available security services, components and options, allied to a clear architecture which provides for the complete lifecycle of the solutions, covering development, deployment and operations. This webinar will discuss specific security services and corresponding best practices for deploying a comprehensive cloud security architecture.

The Cloud Standards Customer Council™ is an end user advocacy group dedicated to accelerating cloud's successful adoption. Join the CSCC™ to discover best practices and to learn about cloud standards and open source initiatives within one organization.